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Raceworks 2006 Ford F150 Prerunner - The Final Step Up?

"Been there, done that." While most of us are working toward legitimately uttering that declaration, Steve Sourapas can belt it out unchallenged. Steve's racing rsum goes back nearly 30 years. Sourapas Motorsports has four SCORE class championships to its credit and one overall SCORE championship. His is the only team ever to win the fabled Baja 1000 overall in a limited-class vehicle. Steve and his team accomplished that feat racing Class 10 in 1985. Steve has also taken the helm of Trophy Truck No. 6 (highlighted in Dezert People: Second Lap) and shared seat time with Brian Ickler at the controls of the Corona Extra RPS Class 1 Unlimited Buggy. Like several of his desert-racing peers, Steve has also thrown his competition hat into the CORR short-course ring, entering the Pro 2 and Super Buggy classes. This plethora of racing classes combined with nearly three decades of racing experience led to one question: What prerunner does he drive?

The prerunner wish list was simple and can be distilled down to four words: fast, smooth, comfortable, and reliable. The base vehicle of choice was an '06 Ford F-150. The quest to combine an F-150 with fast, smooth, comfortable, and reliable led to the door of Stewart's Raceworks.

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Like Steve, Stewart's Raceworks has a long off-road rsum with impressive highlights. Raceworks' creations include Wayne Lugo's Trophy Truck, a four-wheel-drive V-8-powered S-10 rally truck for a customer in Indonesia, and Protrucks for European customers. Raceworks also offers race-prep services and has the substantial Tube Specialties racing fleet under its charge. Even with a variety of vehicle builds to its credit, Stewart's Raceworks states, "Our true passion is the Ford F-150."

This is at least the fourth time a Raceworks F-150 has found its way onto our pages. Let's see Steve Olliges' bright-red '90 I-beam truck was first, followed soon after by a feature on Scott McMillin's '00 three-seater. Jump forward a few years, and we wrote about Mark McMillin's four-seat, four-wheel-drive SuperCrew.

Although each of these three F-150s properly showcased the building talent and Blue Oval passion that's in-house at Stewart's, there's an important difference between those trucks and the Corona Extra three-seater on these pages. The latest-generation Raceworks F-150 prerunner is based on a full set of CAD drawings in place of more typical one-off, case-by-case fabrication methods. After the CAD files were created in the computer, they were translated into DXF files, which were then sent to a nearby waterjet-cutting facility. The waterjet cutter then translated the DXF files into specifically shaped aircraft-grade 4130 chrome-moly. The computer work carries big benefits: It saves fabrication time, improves the design, and ensures repeatability. To date, there are about a half-dozen Raceworks-designed F-150 prerunners in action across the southwestern U.S. and in Baja. In addition to building the F-150, Stewart's Raceworks has sold its design to a few racing teams for their own fabricators to use.

Off-Road's lenses were fortunate enough to be there during the Corona Extra F-150's first time in the dirt. Fast, smooth, comfortable, and reliable have indeed been combined with an F-150. When you've "been there and done that," getting behind the wheel of a prerunner like this just might be the final step up.